History Characters / AlanPartridge

* AmbiguouslyBi: Though he really only shows interest in women, he often has weird dreams where he dances to a crowd of men wearing a codpiece, and he has shown some curiosity towards "ladyboys". However, Alan generally has right-wing leanings and has in the past described himself as a 'homo-skeptic', but has lately become more accepting of it in his attempts to be more politically correct. Overall, Alan is ''probably'' mostly straight, but at the very least seems to have some latent-if-suppressed bi-curiosity at least, with a corresponding amount of gay panic to compensate. His creators have tended to describe him as "a man who's not gay, but is very worried that he might be".

* TheDeterminator: Once he's got an idea in his head he can be quite determined to see it through to the bitter end. Often deconstructed however, since (a) the idea is often not that great to begin with, (b) he also tends to put himself through a lot of unnecessary suffering as a result, and (c) the goal that he's aiming for isn't really worth it to begin with. For example, in ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' his determination to see out a low-rent corporate awards gig for a fireplace manufacturer ends up with him impaling his left foot on a spike while trying to climb a fence and refusing to go to the hospital until the gig's over, resulting in him repeatedly vomiting out of sheer pain in front of the audience, completely humiliating himself and tanking his latest business venture.

* PungeonMaster: He's ''deeply'' fond of puns. Although even he seems [[EverybodyHasStandards disgusted]] with "[[IncrediblyLamePun chatty-chatty-bang-bang]]".

* WickedCultured: Downplayed and inverted. While Alan isn't exactly evil, he ''is'' a massive jerkass ... and his tastes are almost uniformly awful, tacky and lame. He dresses like a ''Series/TopGear'' presenter having a midlife crisis, enthusiastically celebrates superficial advertising and marketing, embraces corporate speak to the max, and once unironically described Music/{{Wings}} as "the band Music/TheBeatles could have been."

** Also applies in '' From the Oasthouse with Alan Partridge'', particularly to his grandchildren. While he's still Alan Patridge, he puts a lot of genuine effort into trying to connect with them, even creating a model of the solar system (that fills his garage) for their visits with him.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: For all her mousy personality when around Alan and the natural sympathy that his treatment of her engenders, there are several hints that Lynn is has a bit of a nasty streak deep down. She's implied to have some LadyMacbeth tendencies whenever Alan's career is on an upward trajectory, and her political / religious leanings appear to lean towards the hard-right, as suggested by her religious background and hero worship of the right-wing Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu.

* HypercompetentSidekick: She's the only reason Alan gets work at all; if he were negotiating himself, he'd get nowhere.

* NotSoAboveItAll: Despite being much more mild mannered and sociable than Alan, she still shows occasional characteristics of a showbiz ruthlessness like he does. She is equally ecstatic when she hears Tony Hayers is dead for example.

* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: Although Alan hails from Norfolk, Mancunian Steve Coogan just gives Alan a more smarmy, arrogant version of his own voice. This may be justified by the fact that Alan is a broadcaster, and so has adopted a 'professional' voice as many tend to do; his autobiography details his attempts to develop a professional voice after being criticised for speaking too nasally by former sports commentator Des Lynam, which may act as a lampshade hanging. In a meta-sense, Alan's Norfolk roots were only created/revealed several years after Coogan had already started playing Partridge, by which time his voice performance was pretty much locked in despite the incongruity.

** He also tries to be a mentor figure to Simon ocassionally [such as in the Mid Morning Maters episode 'Chef']...again unsuccessfully.

* VitriolicBestBuds: Despite his behaviour he does care about the people closets to him deep down [Lynne, Michael, Simon] and does make ameds when fallouts occure [such a with Lynne in ''Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa''].

* WickedCultured: Downplayed and inverted. While Alan isn't exactly evil, he ''is'' a massive jerkass... and his tastes are almost uniformly awful, tacky and lame. He dresses like a ''Series/TopGear'' presenter having a midlife crisis, enthusiastically celebrates superficial advertising and marketing, embraces corporate speak to the max, and once unironically described ''Music/{{Wings}} as "the band Music/TheBeatles could have been."

* BitchInSheepsClothing: For all her mousy personality when around Alan and the natural sympathy that his treatment of her engenders, there are several hints that Lynn is has a bit of a nasty streak deep down. She's implied to have some LadyMacbeth tendencies whenever Alan's career is on an upward trajectory, and her political / religious leanings appear to lean towards the hard-right, as suggested by her Baptist church membership and hero worship of hard-right Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu.

* TheFundamentalist: She's a devoted member of a Baptist church and has a rather God-bothering prudishness to her personality.

* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Well, "protagonist" at least, but Alan's the main character most of the time and many of his views on many social and cultural issues tend to be somewhat retrograde. He describes himself as "homoskeptical" on one occasion, and generally tends to have somewhat outdated views on many social, ethnic and cultural minorities. Though it is played with, as Alan doesn't seem to be malicious in terms of his prejudices (which tend to spring more from ignorance and a sheltered lifestyle than anything else) and seems to have some awareness that he should at least try to present himself as more politically correct than he apparently is, though that seems to be more for the cynical reasons of trying to ingratiate himself into a media culture which in his mind tends to skew somewhat left-wing (in public at least).

* ItsAllAboutMe: Probably his defining character trait. Alan's ego and narcissism is all consuming. He believes he's entitled to be the centre of all attention, tries to make every situation revolve around him, gets petulant and angry whenever anyone else is the focus of the limelight and does anything he can to sabotage other people so that they don't outshine him. One suspects that deep down he actually doesn't particularly want to be a broadcaster at all (he's certainly not very good at it, and he seems to genuinely hate the general public and having to interact with them), it's just that it's the one career which guarantees that people will be paying attention to him.

* AmbiguouslyBi: Though he really only shows interest in women, he often has weird dreams where he dances to a crowd of men wearing a codpiece, and he has shown some curiosity towards "ladyboys". However, Alan generally has right-wing leanings and has in the past described himself as a 'homo-skeptic', but has lately become more accepting of it in his attempts to be more politically correct. Overall, Alan is ''probably'' mostly straight, but at the very least seems to have some latent-if-suppressed bi-curiosity at least. His creators have tended to describe him as "a man who's not gay, but is very worried that he might be".

* ItsAllAboutMe: Probably his defining character trait. Alan's ego and narcissism is all consuming. He believes he's entitled to be the centre of all attention, tries to make every situation revolve around him, gets petulant and angry whenever anyone else is the focus of the limelight and does anything he can to sabotage other people so that they don't outshine him. One suspects that deep down he actually doesn't particularly want to be a broadcaster at all (he's certainly not very good at it), it's just that it's the one career which guarantees that people will be paying attention to him.

** While still a jerk, his breakdown between ''I'm Alan Partridge'' series 1+ 2 made him more sympathetic and he seems more content with his lot.

* NeatFreak: Downplayed, but there is a rather subtle running gag throughout the franchise suggesting that Alan is a bit weirdly obsessed with personal cleanliness. On one occasion he mentions that he likes to put a couple of cups of Dettol antiseptic fluid into his bath, on another he mentions a preference for showering both immediately before and after sex, and his childhood nickname Smelly Alan Fartridge appears to be a significant BerserkButton for him, suggesting it has left some scars.

* CannotTellFictionFromReality: Downplayed, but there are several hints that Alan tends to credulously believe anything he sees on screen. For example, in ''Knowing Me Knowing You'', an interview with a famous author gradually makes it clear that he genuinely believes Literature/SherlockHolmes was a real person.

* CompetitionFreak: As part of his overall InferioritySuperiorityComplex, he seems to be utterly convinced that he's in a zero-sum competition with practically everyone around him in almost every situation. In ''Sceptred Isle'', when temporarily manning a supermarket check-out station he is convinced that another server, apparently the shop's top employee, is riddled with jealousy about how much better at it he is than her, when the viewer can plainly see that she's utterly unbothered and just focussing on doing her own job. And in ''Nomad'' he becomes fixated on what he views as a competitive sports rivalry with a perfectly pleasant old woman who he keeps meeting in the swimming pool he frequents; he acts as if she's his nemesis when in fact she's just getting some exercise.

* DontExplainTheJoke: A recurring gag is that due to a combination of immense pedantry, a condescending dismissiveness of the intelligence of almost everyone around him and a chronic case of NoSenseOfHumor, Alan will almost inevitably explain the punchline of every attempt at a joke he makes as soon as he's made it.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Alan's ego and narcissism is all consuming. He believes he's entitled to be the centre of all attention, tries to make every situation revolve around him, gets petulant and angry whenever anyone else is the focus of the limelight and does anything he can to sabotage other people so that they don't outshine him.

* WickedCultured: Downplayed and inverted. While Alan isn't exactly evil, he ''is'' a massive jerkass... and his tastes are almost uniformly awful, tacky and lame. He dresses like a ''Series/TopGear'' presenter having a midlife crisis, enthusiastically celebrates superficial marketing and corporate speak, and once unironically described ''Music/{{Wings}} as "the band Music/TheBeatles could have been."

* CompetitionFreak: As part of his overall InferioritySuperiorityComplex, he seems to be utterly convinced that he's in a zero-sum competition with practically everyone around him in almost every situation. In ''Sceptred Isle'', when temporarily manning a supermarket check-out station he is convinced that another server, apparently the shop's top employee, is riddled with jealousy about how much better at it he is than her, when the viewer can plainly see that she's utterly unbothered and just focussing on doing her own job. And in ''Nomad'' he seems convinced that he's become embroiled in a competitive sports rivalry with a perfectly pleasant old woman who he keeps meeting in the swimming pool he frequents.

* DaddyIssues: He seems to have some serious gripes against his father if ''I, Partridge'' and ''Nomad'' are to be believed. That said, it's played with; the "to be believed" part is a pretty big ask given Alan's UnreliableNarrator tendencies, self-absorption, tendencies to hold excessive grudges over relatively minor slights, and cynical attempts to try and tap into "misery lit" to make his books more marketable. Alan discusses his father as if he were a cold, abusive monster, but reading between the lines and accounting for Alan's skewed perspectives and outright lies suggests that he was probably somewhat repressed, aloof and hard-to-like but was otherwise a perfectly average middle-class man of his time whose "abuse" was just normal parenting (for the time at least) that Alan has distorted and blown out of proportion for his own reasons.

* DaddyIssues: He seems to have some serious gripes against his father if ''I, Partridge'' and ''Nomad'' are to be believed. That said, it's played with; the "to be believed" part is a pretty big ask given Alan's UnreliableNarrator tendencies, self-absorption, tendencies to hold excessive grudges over relatively minor slights, and cynical attempts to try and tap into "misery lit" to make his books more marketable. Alan discusses his father as if he were a cold, abusive monster, but reading between the lines and accounting for Alan's skewed perspectives and outright lies suggests that he was probably somewhat repressed, aloof and hard-to-like but was otherwise a perfectly average middle-class man of his time whose "abuse" was just normal parenting that Alan has distorted and blown out of proportion for his own reasons.

* NoSocialSkills: The great irony of Alan's life is that he's desperate to be a famous celebrity, in particular a chat-show host, yet possesses almost no social skills that would help him with this whatsoever. He's chronically lacking in charm and charisma, he's awkward and ill-at-ease in other people's company, he's no good at small talk, he's boring, pedantic and obsessed with inane trivial minutiae, his interpersonal skills come off as smarmy, he tends to say inappropriate things at the wrong time and has very little filter, he doesn't really seem to understand how the world works, he's thin-skinned and tends to get overly combative at the slightest provocation, he's arrogant and smug with very little justification, he's childish, he doesn't care about other people beyond what they can do for him, and so on.

* BadBoss: He's too much of a coward to tell his production staff that he didn't get a second series, instead choosing to abruptly fire them one at a time for absurd random reasons. He doesn't tell his secretary she's been fired so he can date her, and later announces she was sacked on the radio. He would even be able to retain two of his staff if he swapped his big Rover 800 for a Rover 100 aka Metro, but he absolutely will not drive a "Mini-Metro", so he opts for a Rover 200 and everyone gets sacked.

* AmbiguouslyBi: Though he really only shows interest in women, he often has weird dreams where he dances to a crowd of men wearing a codpiece, and he has shown some curiosity towards "ladyboys". However, Alan generally has right-wing leanings and has in the past described himself as a 'homo-skeptic', but has lately become more accepting of it in his attempts to be more politically correct. Overall, Alan is ''probably'' mostly straight, but at the very least seems to have some latent-if-suppressed bi-curiosity at least.

* NoSenseOfHumor: He ''thinks'' he has one, but he doesn't. His jokes are nearly always terrible, laboured and obvious puns, made worse by the fact that he has no concept of DontExplainTheJoke. On top of that, he has very little tolerance for other people's jokes and seems to hate the idea of people having any kind of fun at all (certainly if it doesn't revolve around him in some way).

* NoSenseOfHumor: He ''thinks'' he has one, but he doesn't. He has very little tolerance for other people's jokes and seems to hate the idea of people having any kind of fun at all (certainly if it doesn't revolve around him in some way).